David and I go way back he got me started on making cheese when his site was in it's infancy and all he had was a couple of cheeses....his cheddar press consisted of a couple of jam jars and an elastic band.

I had a litre of milk was left out of the fridge and it went sour and rather than waste it I thought back to the days when I was in the infants class and we left milk on the window cill in the summer and the teacher showed us how to separate the curds from the whey by straining through a handkerchief...

I pressed that little cheese all 4oz of it and tasted it a couple of months later I suppose it was a cheese after a fashion but I have tasted better

I then found David's page and another cheese forum called Lacto Bacillus where David posted and I started to post as well. LB fell through and then came The Cheese Wizard but I think this failed about three years ago.

But keep in mind if you follow any of David's recipes he is American and deals only with American measurements which are different to ours.

Jack was developing his cheesey press and trying to find a way of keeping the pressure on after winding down to take up the pressure. At this time I was using a fruit press and it had to be given a couple of turns every so often as the pressure released itself when it reached the end of it's tracel.

Jack came up with fitting a spring which would continue to keep the pressure on for a time depending on the length of the spring and I think he has now copyrighted it.We were also developing the stilton recipe and David Fankhauser was going to make his American blue as he has no roquefort cheese avialable for Roquefortium.

We had a laugh because David used a phillips screw driver to make the holes in his cheese after dipping it in vodka before he drunk it.

Rik wrote:Jack came up with fitting a spring which would continue to keep the pressure on for a time depending on the length of the spring and I think he has now copyrighted it. We were also developing the stilton recipe and David Fankhauser was going to make his American blue as he has no roquefort cheese avialable for Roquefortium.

Is this the type of press you were talking about? I have just got hold of this one to start making cheese. It's quite small so suites my small flat.